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Topic: 2nd disaster -- bee poisoning (Read 1459 times)

A couple of hours ago I got back from my daughter's home, we have been away since Friday. I went to check on the bees and there was one colony at the very end that had the landing board covered in dead bees, and again as many on the ground dead. It has been raining since I left, today was sunny, so today was the only day that they may have been foraging. I do not use any form of poison around my home, be it herbicides, pestides, and so on. The ant bait traps were a huge mistake that I learned a valuable lesson from and will never repeat. I believe the poision has come from a neighbour nearby, but unknown to me whom it may be.

I need to know if anyone has had experience with bee poisoning and how it works in the hive. I had poisoning with my bees about 10 days ago, brought on by myself, I take full blame, because I had put ant traps under 2 hives. I only lost part of one colony with this ant poisoning, the rest of the colony seemed OK, even after many days.

1. When bees bring poison into the hive, is it the house bees (and the foragers that brought it in) that the nectar/poison is transferred to that usually are affected?

2. Does the poison usually kill the nectar-recieving bees so quickly that the poison is not distributed throughout the colony?

I have some very hard work to do in the morning, cleaning up the area around the colony, giving a clean, new bottomboard and making sure every bit of dirt and grass is cleaned up in the vicinity and examining the colony to see if any members in there are alive. I need to get out there before the bees are foraging, in case all colony members are dead and I have robber bees entering, perhaps themselves being poisoned as well.

I am looking forward to any replies that may help me with my new mission for tomorrow. Have a wonderful night, and a beautiful day. Cindi

I think those are the two questions that need some serious discussion.

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There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee. Robert Service

I am so sorry to hear about this new happening. I do not have the answer for you, but my thoughts are with you and hope it all turns out ok. This is probably my number one fear for the bees with all the pesticides being used today.

many pepole use ant stakes with no problem. I have put ant stakes under all four corners of hives.they seldom even afect the ants.my bigest fear is that the piosion would be caried in by the ants them selfs.the stuff is pretty light wait by desighn so the ants cary it back to the ant hill. was there ant activity? was there dead ants?I have seen pesticide piosoning from over spray and there is a pile of dead bees that is massive in size inside the hive. how many dead bees are there? I have seen small swarms from the same yard land on a nearby hive in the evening and late in the season they would do battel and in the morning they where dead.I am very curious about this I dont think you did wrong.even if it was the ant stakes. I just cant believe this was the cause. RDY-B

Cindi, Can you send some samples off ? How about contacting your local beekeeping asociation for help ? Perhaps you may talk to your neighbors to see if they are having a problem controlling a certain insect pest like caterpillars, etc... Someone may be unknowingly causing your die off. Sorry you are having to deal with this, I got a taste of this after hurricane Katrina, when the mosquito people would fly over blasting away. I actually heard the planes flying overhead, then heard on the news they were going to unload mosquito spray from the sky. I was able to save my hives but lost a lot of bees. I had to cover all my hives until they stopped spraying. I put tarps over my apiary and this helped. They stopped spraying after a week. I heard the planes three different times, it was like a war zone, the planes would pass right over your roof practically.

i'm sorry to hear about the poisoning. i've had several experiences with poisoning usually from pesticides used by surrounding farmers. in some cases, most of the bees didn't make it back to the hive and the few that did were quickly expelled from the colony. it seemed the bees inside knew they were bringing in poison and threw them out. in one case all got poisoned, including the queen. that was a total wipe out. another case i opened the box and the bottom board was full of dead bees which i had to clean out, but thankfully the queen was still alive although her colony suffered a lot and took time to recover.

i think it all depends on the kind of poison they got. some act more quickly than others, specially with pesticides. you could try closing the box and make it face another way. sometimes that works since the bees have to orient to a diff direction. goodluck to you!

Guys and gals, thank you for your condolences :). I had a good cry last night, just like Annette did. Got over it from the help of my loving husband. I am very much OK this morning, with a new day, sleep always brings relief from stress in our lives. Annette, Tig and JP, I am sorry to hear losses that all of you have taken with bees dying from poisoning, and you Annette, some disease. Annette, did you ever find out what happened to your poor little colony? I lost track of your posts.

I have several agendas today. First is to get out to the bees as soon as all the kids are off to school (and that is many, lol). I will clean up around the hive perfectly, give a new bottomboard and clean the old one. I will check through the hive and see if there are any bees left, especially looking for her majesty.

The last poisoning I had did not affect all the bees in that colony. It certainly set them back, but I strengthened this last poisoned colony (after about a week, to make sure no more bees were carrying poison around in the colony) with some frames of brood and bees from a colony that was boiling over with bees. That boiling over colony did not have any queen cells, so I may have helped to prevent some swarming, so that was all good.

One of my biggest agendas over the next couple of days is to compile a little newsletter about the honeybees, their wonderful effect on our lives and how important it is to be very aware when spraying pesticides and herbicides in their gardens. I will distribute these newsletters to each home within a certain radius so that people are more aware of how honeybees can be so adversely affected by the chemicals.

I know that most people are not even aware of any damages that can be done to the honeybees and other wonderful pollinators of this world through "poisions". It is not their fault, they just don't know.

I was one of these too, before I understood and even thought how my actions with chemicals can affect nature. People must be taught about these things, and this is another agenda in my life. Hopefully I can make a small difference in this large world. I may even compose something for our local newspaper, I feel I have a mission that must be accomplished, there are many beekeepers that must have issues with poison. Anyways, off to a wonderful and beautiful day, a bonus is, the sun is shinin', after 4 days of rainy, poopy weather. Cindi

Logged

There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee. Robert Service

My little weak hive has DWV caused by the varroa mite. The mite count was very high and MB believes that this caused the virus. I guess I failed to stay on top of the counting. (not laziness, just did not want to disturb the hive when it was going through so many difficulties) Anyway, I am doing regular powdered sugar treatments now and the count is going down, down. They may or may not recover. They are actually looking a little better this week, but I have been told not to get my hopes up.

I just got about 25 lbs of honey from my other hive which thrilled me to death and gave me so much pleasure.

I hope you figure out what is happening around your hives and somehow put a stop to it. I used to have a contract with Clark Pest Control to spray my house for ants, spiders, etc. That was 2BB (Two years Before Bees) But people really do not understand what is happening and how serious this all is. I think the pest control companies need to be educated first.

Oh by the way I read your story and it was so interesting. What an amazing life you have had and still have. I will respond back to you later.

I'm never quite sure what the bees got hit with, when they do, but a lot of dead bees are usually piled up on the bottom board and out front and the ones that are in those piles that are still alive are crawling and disoriented. Usually the hives pull through and build back up. I don't do anything special except clean the dead bees off the bottom board, and in extreme cases, out of the bottom box.